The field of the invention relates generally to commerce conducted within an online community or between online communities, and more specifically, to methods and systems of universal payment account translations for facilitating transactions between community participants within an online community or between participants in different online communities.
A developing phenomenon on the Internet is community participants and businesses forming and participating in virtual communities organized by various site sponsors, including but not limited to, social networks, messaging sites (e.g., Blackberry Messenger), and gaming sites. For example, community participants use social networking sites/messaging networks as part of their daily life to stay in touch with friends and family. Businesses and professionals use business networking sites/business networks to stay informed and in touch with other business professionals. At least some community participants are regular shoppers on favorite retail sites, and use search engine sites and retail aggregators as “trusted” portals to other Internet shopping sites. Finally, at least some other community participants are members and repeat participants at gaming sites, where gaming sites may include role playing games, first person action games, simulation games, and gambling games.
Many community participants access more than one community-oriented site. For example, a given individual may be a registered member of Facebook.com, MySpace.com, and Twitter.com. The same individual may be listed on multiple other individuals' messenger contacts lists. That same individual may also be a member of Linkedin.com in a professional capacity. That same community participant may shop at Amazon.com, use e-mail and search services from Google.com or Yahoo.com and may be an avid and repeat participant at Worldofwarcraft.com (gaming site).
The technology used by community participants and business community participants to access community-oriented sites is also evolving from the traditional home PC to include new mobile access devices. Such devices include mobile phones and Smartphones, PDAs, and netbook computers.
There is a growing desire for community participants and businesses to conduct commerce with each other (as opposed to with the site operator) while interacting at community sites. Specifically, there is a desire for community participants to be able to (a) pay each other (person-to-person), (b) make purchases from member and non-member merchants, (c) make charitable donations and contributions to various charities, and (d) buy virtual currency or virtual goods and services for use while interacting at the respective community site.
In response to the desire for conducting commerce at community sites, many site organizers are creating new proprietary payment systems and are acting as a Payment Service Provider (PSP) in an effort to better serve community commerce requirements. At least some of the proprietary payment systems being offered by a PSP for community sites typically follow one of two generic models, namely, an Externally Linked Funding Account (ELFA) or an Internal Stored Value Account (ISVA).
In an ELFA, the proprietary payment capability offered by the PSP is linked to an existing payment or funding account managed by a third party. Such externally managed payment and funding accounts may include the community participant's payment card account (credit, debit, and prepaid) or bank Demand Deposit Account (DDA), and the account information is often stored by the PSP to facilitate site payments. When a participant makes or receives a payment via the community PSP, the funds are either debit or credited to the underlying payment card account or DDA.
In an ISVA, the proprietary payment capability offered by the PSP is linked to an internally managed stored value account managed by the PSP. The “value” stored in the account may represent actual money, “virtual money” that may only be used at the community site, or some other form of value with local significance only (such as game credits, or use credits). While community participants may fund the stored value account from external payment card accounts or their DDA, commerce payments made at the site are debited or credited to the participants proprietary stored value account.
The current proprietary payment system models present a number of structural problems that decrease the value of the payment service to both participants and the PSP, and as a result inhibit community commerce.
A fundamental problem of the externally linked funding account model is that this model requires the community participant's personal payment card account or DDA data to be stored or “left” in many places under the control of third parties (i.e., the PSP). As the number of community sites storing the community participants' personal data increases, so do the odds that payment data will be compromised. This increasing risk of compromise is well understood by community participants and leads to the perception of increased risk of identity theft. The risk of identity theft or the perceived risk of identity theft is one of today's major barriers to Internet commerce in general, and leads to reduced community participant adoption of community commerce.
In contrast to the ELFA model, the ISVA model may reduce the risk of identity theft and the compromise of personal data. However, the ISVA model results in reduced convenience for community participants and reduced control of their money. As the number of community sites grows where a community participant conducts commerce, the community participant is forced to disburse their money in an ever increasing number of isolated payment accounts. In doing so, community participants loose the ability to use their funds for purposes other than at the respective account site, and they have difficulty tracking the balances of those multiple isolated accounts.
Moreover, linking the site payment capability to external funding accounts, as provided in the ELFA model reduces the amount of value that can be added by the PSP and limits the ultimate control of the PSP over their payments value proposition. Such a method prevents the site host or PSP from basing the user value proposition on site-defined payment business rules and prevents the PSP from authenticating the community participant as the owner of the underlying payment account. This method also inhibits the PSP in differentiating the community participant payment experience and inhibits the PSP from creating site brand value associated with that payment capability.
In contrast, operating an ISVA model provides the ultimate degree of freedom for the PSP to define their payment value proposition, but such proprietary systems decrease the utility value of the payment service to community participants. Proprietary stored value accounts inhibit interoperability with other community site payment systems and inhibit the community participants' ability to transact with participants from other community sites.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system that provides security against identity theft by protecting community participant account data while also providing interoperability among multiple community sites.